Deep Sea Mining in the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam?

On November 12, 2025, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) published a Request for Information and Interest (RFI) for “Commercial Leasing for Outer Continental Shelf Minerals Offshore the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).” This is the first step in a process that could lead to deep-sea mining in U.S. Pacific waters. The RFI opens a 30-day public comment period, closing December 12, 2025, though the governors of Guam and CNMI have requested a 120-day extension, citing the need for more time to assess environmental, cultural, and economic impacts.

READ & BOOKMARK: Mariana Trench Deep Sea Mining Educational Resources

The proposed RFI area covers over 35 million acres -- an area the size of New York state -- just east of the Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, with depths ranging from 3,700 to 25,100 feet. BOEM is seeking input across 18 categories, including potential effects on marine ecosystems, Indigenous communities, fisheries, cultural resources, and fair rental rates for leases. Importantly, this RFI does not authorize mining; it is an information-gathering step to evaluate industry interest and environmental considerations before any leasing decisions are made.

Deep-sea mining raises significant concerns. Scientists warn that disturbing the seabed could irreversibly damage fragile ecosystems and biodiversity, while cultural leaders stress the ocean’s deep spiritual and subsistence importance. The area’s proximity to the Mariana Trench, one of Earth’s most unique habitats, amplifies these risks.

The Friends of the Mariana Trench -- an organization I helped found almost twenty years ago -- started an Mariana Trench Deep Sea Mining Educational Resources, and update it daily with the latest news and information from the Marianas. Importantly, we list ongoing ways to participate in the process, as well as our key concerns with the proposal. I share them with you here, but also encourage you to bookmark the resource document and to check it regularly for updates.

Ways to Participate

1. Submit a comment directly to the Federal Register
2. If you are an individual living anywhere in the world: sign this petition led by Friends of the Mariana Trench
3. If you represent a civil society organization, business, or other environmental organization: sign this letter led by Friends of the Mariana Trench
4. If you are a scientist, scholar, or conservation professional: sign this letter led by Tåno, Tåsi, yan Todu.
5. Share these social media posts

Key Concerns

The Indigenous peoples of the Marianas will be most impacted by these decisions

The environmental damage from deep sea mining by the one-time taking of resources that have been in our waters since the dawn of time will affect our communities permanently. Throughout history colonizing interests have caused harm to our communities; they erode traditional stewardship and sever generational ties to our ocean. This exploitation violates the dignity and self-determination of Chamorros, Refaluwasch, and all people who call our islands home. In American Samoa, Impossible Metals offered a paltry 1% of profit share to the local community, while the people would be burdened with 100% of the environmental damage, forever.

Deep sea mining is likely to cause permanent damage to seabed and ocean resources.

Deep sea mining poses a serious threat to marine ecosystems, with the potential to cause irreversible damage to the seabed and surrounding ocean resources. The process involves disturbing vast areas of the ocean floor, releasing sediment plumes and toxic discharge that can spread for miles. A 2025 study published in Nature Communications revealed that waste discharge from deep-sea mining operations could significantly reduce food availability for deep-ocean species, effectively starving marine life. These findings underscore growing concerns among scientists and environmentalists that deep sea mining may permanently alter fragile habitats that have taken millennia to form.

Deep sea mining is a form of colonization and militarization of the ocean.

Acting BOEM Director Matt Giacona confirmed in a press release, “The Pacific Outer Continental Shelf holds vast potential for critical minerals that power American manufacturing and defense technology.” Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) representative Maureen Penjueli said, "Critical minerals, whether from land or from the deep ocean itself, have a military end use, and that's been made very clear in 2025. They're deemed extremely vital for defence industrial base, enabling the production of military platforms such as fighter aircraft, tanks, missiles, submarines. 2025 is the year where we see the link between critical minerals on the sea floor and use [in the] military."

Despite this, deep-sea mining only accounts for four of the 60 USGS-defined critical minerals, two of which, copper and manganese, are widely available within the US and from allies, while the other two, cobalt and nickel, are currently experiencing a significant surplus which is projected to extend into 2030.

Deep sea mining is harmful to our culture and heritage

Seabed mining of minerals is harmful to Chamorro and Refaluwasch traditional cultural places and biocultural resources: for the Native people of the Marianas, the deep ocean is inseparable from our identity, spirituality, navigation traditions, and longstanding relationships with marine ecosystems that hold ancestral significance. Disturbance of the seabed, sediment plumes, noise, and biodiversity loss threaten traditional use areas, disrupt wayfinding practices, and undermine the cultural knowledge systems tied to these environments. Because these connections are place-based and irreplaceable, seabed mining risks erasing both the archaeological record and living Indigenous heritage. Equally serious are the impacts on historic, tangible underwater cultural heritage because industrial extraction can physically destroy or bury irreplaceable archaeological sites—shipwrecks, aircraft wrecks, and submerged cultural landscapes—that remain unrecorded and fragile, particularly in deep waters where heritage has not been surveyed.

Deep sea mining is controversial across the Pacific.

Over 3,000 territorial residents and diaspora signed a petition led by Right to Democracy and the America the Beautiful for All Coalition opposing deep sea mining in American Samoa (the petition had 2,000 signatures when it was submitted as part of the last RFI, but it has grown to over 3,000, with 900+ from Guam and 500+ from CNMI).

In 2021, the Liheslaturan Guahan passed a resolution, “Relative to Reaffirming Guam’s Right to Safeguard Cultural Resources and to Protect Ocean Ecosystems from Environmental Harm and Exploitive Industry Interests Through a Moratorium on Seabed Mining, to Ensure the Health of Guam’s People.” The resolution calls on the United States to “support and implement a moratorium on deep seabed mining in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone.” The resolution was introduced by Senators Sabina Flores Perez (D), Therese M. Terlaje (D), Telo T. Taitgue (R), and Joanne Brown (R).

Palau, Marshall Islands, and Micronesia called for a global moratorium on deep sea mining in international waters. Domestically, Palau banned mining, while the Marshalls enacted a national ban on deep-sea mining permits. Micronesia created a legal framework for future seabed mining; FSM’s Seabed Resources Act of 2014 requires all exploration or extraction within its EEZ to undergo licensing and environmental review. Nauru, Cook Islands, and Kiribati support deep sea mining, both in their EEZs and on the high seas.

The proposed area in the Marianas contains no nodule fields of commercial value.

Deep-sea mining in this region would target hydrothermal vent deposits and cobalt-rich seamounts, both of which have significant scientific and cultural value. Cobalt-rich seamounts also provide essential nursery and foraging grounds for many important commercial and subsistence fisheries. Vent and seamount mining is much less viable even than nodule mining and no US-based company is currently investing in the technologies to exploit these resources. There is overwhelming scientific consensus that mining hydrothermal vents cannot be conducted in an environmentally responsible manner.

The interested parties will likely be conducting experimental tests of prototype mining tools

Based on the geology of the region and the current state of deep-sea mining technology, it is likely that any interest in mining in the Marianas is less for commercial mining than for testing of prototype mining equipment prior to deployment elsewhere. As such, experimental seabed mining in the Marianas is unlikely to yield long-term economic gains for the region.

The Trump administration is selling out public lands, waters, and local communities in all corners of the United States

The Trump administration is threatening deep sea mining in the Marianas, American Samoa, mid-Atlantic, and on the high seas. They are opening all of California, swaths of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This is part of a broader effort of making it more difficult for Indigenous peoples across the United States to participate in natural resource management, and erasing our stories from public lands and waters.